Hanover woman heads to Malaysia with Fulbright Scholarship

Andrea Zinn will leave for Malaysia on Jan. 2 to spend 10 months teaching English

By Sarah Fleischman

sfleischman@eveningsun.com @sefleischman on Twitter

Posted:
12/22/2013 06:57:54 PM EST

Andrea Zinn with children at an orphanage in 2012 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Submitted - The Evening Sun)

Andrea Zinn of Hanover is a Fulbright Scholarship recipient and will leave Jan. 2 to teach and do research in communities in Malaysia. (Shane Dunlap - The Evening Sun)

Just days after Christmas, Andrea Zinn will embark on an adventure only 75 other people in the United States will experience in the coming year: teaching English in Malaysia with the help of a Fulbright Scholarship.

Zinn is one of 1,700 recipients of a Fulbright Scholarship this year and only one of 75 accepted to the organization's teaching program in Malaysia.

The 22-year-old is the first graduate of Delone Catholic High School to receive one of the competitive awards. In 2008, a graduate of South Western High School received the same funding to teach English in Germany, and a handful of others from the Hanover area have received the scholarships over the years.

Zinn's journey to Malaysia began as a child. With parents heavily involved in the community, serving in another country is just natural to her, she said.

"They're the kind of people who donate blood every eight weeks on the dot," Zinn said.

While her parents, Jan and Ken Zinn, are passionate about giving back to the immediate community, Zinn wants to serve on an international level. At one time, she wanted to work at a corporation using her degree in international business from Villanova University, but decided to pursue her interest in international development, which stemmed from volunteer experiences in Peru and Cambodia.

"I'm the first person in my family to get a passport, so I'm an oddball in that way," she said.

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In 2011, Zinn studied abroad in Italy for a summer and spent three weeks in Cambodia volunteering at an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS. The next year, she spent three weeks volunteering at an after school education program in Peru. There, she realized the need for good education in developing countries. In Peru, children are only in school for three to four hours each day, so the supplemental program she helped with made a huge impact, she said.

"Before the program, kids skipped school," Zinn said. "Now they wake up early to study before school."

It's that kind of impact she hopes to make during her 10 month stay in Malaysia. She would have loved to teach in Cambodia, but there isn't a Fulbright program there.

After leaving for Malaysia on Jan. 2, she will have intensive teaching and language training in Malaysia's capital city of Kuala Lumpur for a month. From there, she'll head to her placement.

She doesn't know what town or school she will be teaching in until she gets to Malaysia. It makes it hard to pack for the trip, since some parts of the country are very conservative in values and dress, while others have more western and Chinese influences, she said.

Throughout the spring as she waited to hear whether or not she received the Fulbright Scholarship, she still applied for jobs, not knowing if her dream of Malaysia would come true. If it did, she would be one of 1700 to receive one of the competitive scholarships and one of only 75 accepted to teach with the organization's teaching program in Malaysia.

She found out of her acceptance to the program in April with a phone call from a friend congratulating her. Her friend, Michaela Gaziano, a fellow student at Villanova University, received an email saying both she and Zinn were accepted to the Malaysia program.

"It's unheard of to have two from the same school who go to the same county," she said.

With little teaching experience and knowledge of the Malay language, Zinn is excited and scared for the 10 month immersion experience.

"It's kind of scary because I know this experience will challenge and change me," Zinn said. "It's a dream come true in so many ways."

During the summer and fall following her graduation from Villanova University, she spent time serving at a summer camp in Austria and interning for Catholic Relief Services.

Zinn said she wishes her community service wouldn't seem extraordinary to people.

She knows and loves the story of how during the Holocaust, the French town of Le Chambon-sur-Ligne didn't turn any Jewish people away, despite the consequences the townspeople would face for hiding them. Thousands of lives were saved because of the town, she said.

"The townspeople were asked why they did it and they said, 'what do you mean why did we do it?'" Zinn said. She has the same attitude when people ask why she is passionate about service, she said. Service feels natural to her.

The story of the town has become known as the conspiracy of goodness, Zinn said, a conspiracy she is trying to live in her own life.

"What if everyone brought their normal actions up to the level of being extraordinary?" Zinn said. "Then being extraordinary would be the new level of normalcy."

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